by Wren Awry
As the Paris Commune of 1871 fought desperately against its own suppression, much of the city was set ablaze.
Conservative journalists, desperate for a scapegoat, invented the pétroleuses—torch-wielding women desperate
to burn everything. In this text, fairy-tale critic Wren Awry ties the pétroleuses into a long line of mythologized fi re-wielding
devil-women—women like Baba Yaga, the youngest sister in the Grimms’ “Fitcher’s Bird,” and the women burned during the great witch hunts of early Modern Europe—as a source of revolutionary inspiration.

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